Pay Teachers More than Principals?

A New York City charter school set to open in 2009 plans to pay its teachers $125,000, while the principal’s starting salary will be $90,000, according to The New York Times. The school’s creator and first principal, Zeke M. Vanderhoek, believes that teacher quality—not accomplished principals or the latest technology—makes a school successful.

Ernest A. Logan, president of the city principals’ union, called the idea of paying the principal less than the teachers “the craziest think I’ve ever heard. ... If you cheapen the role of the school leader, you’re going to have anarchy and chaos.”

All eyes will be on the school when it opens to see if Vanderhoek’s experiment of paying teachers nearly 2.5 times the national average teacher salary—and apparently trivializing the role of principals—will actually work. What do you think?